Spurned By Lawmakers, Governor To Revise HUSKY Proposal

Single Mom Swept Up In Capitol Fray Over Health Benefits

Renee Bailey, a Torrington resident, suffered a series of setbacks in the… (MICHAEL McANDREWS, Hartford…)

May 06, 2013|By WILLIAM WEIR, bweir@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is revising a plan to significantly reduce money for HUSKY A, the state-funded insurance program for low-income children and their parents, after his proposal failed to clear a legislative committee.

Under Malloy's plan, the change to HUSKY A would affect families whose incomes fall between 133 percent and 185 percent of the federal poverty level. Children of families at those income levels would still be eligible for HUSKY A benefits, but their parents would not.

Ben Barnes, Malloy's budget director, said Monday afternoon that the governor's office is revising the plan to ease the impact on HUSKY A recipients.

According to the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut, the governor's plan would eliminate HUSKY A health insurance for up to 37,500 people in an attempt to shift them toward coverage from the state health exchange, an online marketplace for health coverage that will be active later this year. The health exchange is part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which was signed into law in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court last year.

The legislature's appropriations committee voted against the governor's plan last month, opting to keep the state benefits unchanged.

The changes proposed initially to the HUSKY A program would save the state $5.6 million in 2014 and $58.8 million in 2015, Barnes had said. Under the revision, he said, some of that money would be rolled over to supplement the federal subsidies provided to people of certain income levels in purchasing coverage from the state health exchange.

He said the plan was still in the works and that he did not know how much money would go to those impacted by the reduction in HUSKY A benefits.

"We obviously have to come to an agreement on the package, but we think [the revision is] a good idea," he said.

In The Balance

Renee Bailey, 36, a single mother from Torrington, would be one of those people affected by the plan.

Bailey has suffered serious financialsetbacks in recent years, losing her full-time job at a heating and plumbing company and being involved in two serious car accidents. One thing that has helped her family get by, she said, is the state's HUSKY A program because of the health benefits it provides.

Bailey, 36, a single mother from Torrington, said that under Malloy's budget plan announced earlier this year, she would lose much of that coverage. The legislature's appropriations committee voted against the governor's plan for HUSKY A, opting to keep the state benefits unchanged last month.

With three part-time jobs, Bailey said, she gets by, and she expects to be in a better position once she gets her master's degree in history this year from Central Connecticut State University. Without HUSKY A to pay for the medicines she needs for injuries from the accidents, that could change.

"If he takes this little piece from me, it stops me dead in my tracks," she said. "I would have to go on disability."

The Connecticut Health Foundation estimates that the average out-of-pocket costs for health insurance from the insurance exchange for people with incomes 133 percent to 185 percent of the federal poverty level will be $1,800.

Malloy's proposal gives parents a little breathing room — they would be offered a year of Medicaid assistance to transition and then lose their HUSKY A benefits in 2015. Parents who are not currently enrolled in HUSKY A will be ineligible to enroll starting in 2014.

Although the costs of coverage from the health exchange will be adjusted according to income level, Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, and others say the additional expenses would still be prohibitive for many families.

"When we ran the numbers, the exchange plan was not affordable and it was our sense that if people had to choose between buying their own insurance [and other routine expenses], they would go without insurance," Harp said, adding that this would just add to the number of uninsured in the state.

Barnes has said that the proposed change to the HUSKY A benefits does what the Affordable Care Act is intended to do: increase access to better health care at an affordable price. Coverage from the health insurance exchange will mean that people will have to pay a certain amount, he said, but federal subsidies provided to people of certain income levels will keep it from being out of reach. Barnes said that the costs of housing, utilities, food, clothing and transportation were all considered in deciding whether to make the proposed changes to HUSKY A.

"We have gone through that and we believe that it's affordable, even taking into account maximum out-of-pocket costs," he said last week. Monday, he said the additional money to the federal subsidies would make it more affordable.